It surely didn’t originate with the troops in the trenches. Apple has floundered and they need a boost.
Actually, it did start in the trenches. The employees were demanding that GE, and before that IBM, give them Macs, because they were more productive on their Macs and had far less down time. IBM tried it and found they had huge savings on IT costs. . . in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
So sad, you are just wrong, again.